HTC gave no hard numbers on how many One smartphones it has sold, only stating that sales are picking up. Previously, an unnamed executive had told The Wall Street Journal that by late May 5m One smartphones had been sold. That was roughly 2 months after the global launch, and 1 month after the U.S. launch (which was delayed to late April).

But Citigroup Inc. (C) Global Markets Inc analyst Kevin Chang estimates there may only have been ~1.2m in May sales and ~600,000 in April sales. He commented to The Taipei Times, "HTC shipments to peak in May, stay at a similar level in June and start to decline in July."

HTC One sales appear to have seriously slid in June, after a May surge.

And reality may be even worse than that when it comes to June sales. HTC pocketed $29B TWD ($962M USD) in May, but just $22.1B TWD ($733M USD) in June. June's sales had erased roughly 70 percent of May's gains over April, at about twice February's record low ($11B TWD ($365M USD)).

In total HTC took in $70.7B TWD ($2.35B USD) for the quarter versus a Bloomberganalyst consensus of $72.8T TWD ($2.42B USD). Net revenue (profit) was $1.25B TWD ($41.5M USD), well short of the $2.17B TWD ($72.0M USD) Bloomberg-surveyed analysts predicted.

HTC has closed several offices as part of a downsizing plan. [Image Source: Reuters]

Those things aside, perhaps the biggest looming threat is the lack of upcoming products in the pipeline, at least according to currently leaked information. HTC is planning on launching an HTC One Mini in August that looks like a substantial step up from the Galaxy S 4 Mini. But the Galaxy S 4 Mini is out now -- and Samsung's rumored to upgrade it around the time of the HTC One Mini launch.

The HTC Mini is arrive late to the party, so to speak. [Image Source: forte.delfi.ee]

Sure, the HTC One impressed, but did HTC tip its hand too early and fail to follow up? That's what increasingly looks to be the case, as the next generation of smartphones to be released over the next few months aim to erase the reviews lead HTC's flagship device briefly enjoyed.

HTC can take comfort in the struggles of Appleand Samsung. But at the end of the day the parts of the roadmap that are leaked or public known seem to suggest HTC to be at a competitive disadvantage looking at the rest of 2013.

Gate's mother was friends with an IBM executive who happened to be tasked with making/buying an operating system for their soon-to-be-released IBM PC. He mentioned this to her while they were having lunch together, and she told him to contact her son Bill because he ran a software company.

She tipped off Bill to expect a call from IBM about an operating system, and when Gates spoke with IBM he told them sure he could provide an operating system, even though he had none and didn't have any experience making one. He called around, found that Seattle Computer Products had something they called QDOS (quick and dirty operating system), negotiated, and bought the rights to it for $50,000. When he later met with IBM, he presented them QDOS as Microsoft DOS.

It wasn't about innovation nor intuition. It was all about having business connections, being in the right place at the right time, and having a ruthless personality which shamelessly withheld information from people for his own personal benefit. You know, the personality type which makes a manager take credit for his subordinate's work. An honest person would've said, "I'm sorry I don't have an OS, but I'm sure I can find you someone who does. Oh here's one. Here's their contact info and a bill for my time finding them for you."